Is Clumping Litter *THIS* bad?

[Guest]

Clumping litter and fragranced litter. Convenient for humans, TERRIBLE for animals.Why?Clumping:1. it sticks to their paws. they lick it, and it can potentially build up in thier stomach, requiring surgery to remove, and in some cases KILLING the cat.2. For longhaired cats, it sticks to thier fur, stomach, etc--same potential problem as before, but not they sometimes get to have a little clumped up piece of cat litter pulling at their fur and causeing generalized discomfurt, it usually has to be cut out of the fur.Fragrance:1. Tends to be a higher incidence among both cats and people of allergies to the product.2. It's a chemical additive, which can be an irritant in general (allergies aside), if the cats I know are anything to go by, among the people who fill the box with fragranced litter, their cats have a higher incidence of bladder infections.Both are at least unpleasant and often quite dangerous for animals. DON'T use them unless you want to risk your cat getting extremely sick or possibly dying.It doesn't matter if you've used it for years withouty a problem. Oops, nothing bad ever happened before but now kitty is dead from a bowel blockage just for the sake of our convenience because we didn't want to use regular litter. BAD BAD STUPID excuse.Although admittedly it seems to be mostly young cats less than two years old and older cats (over 10) that die most frequently, I don't know why, maybe for the young ones their digestion hasn't fully developed yet and elderly cats are sensitive to more in general...But I'm tired of seeing this practice continue, I'm tired of hearing about cats dying from it or having to have surgery from such an easily avoided danger. It seems like such a simple thing, it seems so obvious to me, but apparently it's not to other people, or else they just don't give a ****. I'd rather think it was ignorance rather than caring more about convenience than the cat.

[Guest]

I don't ever use fragrance litter but i do use the clumping kind. My cat never has any on her paws and doesn't like to lick her feet so i have never had a problem. Although, i can see it being a problem for long haired cats...

[SeaShellE]

There is a clumping cat litter made out of wheat that has no additives for odor control. I understand it is great for the catbox odors. I can't remember the name of it right now. It is flushable and safe for septic systems. If I can remember the product, I will post it. I have the name of it at work and I will look tomorrow.

[Guest]

I use that litter but I have to because my Kitty's toilet is one of those LitterMaids so it has to clump fast before it rakes it. It's really cool, well as cool as a cat box can get any way, lol PeekABoo where did you get your info from? I would love to read up on this.Sandra

[Guest]

I've used a brand of litter called Feline Pine, it's made from sawdust that's pressed together into little pieces. It doesn't clump, but once you get used to the natural odor of the litter itsself, then it does a great job of controlling urine odor. It does need to be changed on a weekly or if you scoop out the solid waste, a bi-weekly basis. It costs about the same as clumping litters, and is WAY more environmentally friendly. I'm not sure if it's flushable, but it could pretty easily be composted for garden fertilizer, if you have a compost heap. The only real downside I've seen to is that my cats don't like it much. They seem to prefer a non scented clumping type litter, and I've never seen either of them have problems with it getting stuck to paws or fur. I think I've seen the wheat stuff you mentioned, SeaShellE, but I don't remember what it's called either. I might give that a try if I can find some, see if the cats will accept it.

[Rachel]

I'd like to know where you're getting your info too. I've been a Vet Tech for 10 years and have yet to see a cat die due to using clumping litter. I have a LitterMaid litterbox for my 3 cats too, Sandra...best thing since sliced bread!! LOL

[Guest]

quote:I have a LitterMaid litterbox for my 3 cats too, Sandra...best thing since sliced bread!! LOL Amen Sister They say that the average cat use's the litter box 6 to 10 times a day, well I have 2 cats that I swear use the litter box 100 times a day one cat will use it and the other is waiting to use it, then they have to wait for it to clean it's self then use it again. Oh and when we do the deep clean they are both just dieing to jump in and dirty it up. My litter "maid" is way under paid, roflmboSandra

[jojo7]

I tried clumping litter 5 years ago when i got my cat...obviously it clumps when wet, so when i saw it sticking to the eyes of my cat, i stopped using it!!...she was just a kitten at the time, so she might have been kicking up the litter more than normal maybe??...but in any case, it ended up stuck to her eyes...i wouldn't take any chances trying it again...

[KittyCaller]

Does anyone else here use the crystals or a combo of litter and crystals? I've actually found they work very very well.

[jojo7]

Kitty, what is crystals??..not sure if i ever even heard of it...would love to know though...sounds interesting...

[KittyCaller]

They're little blue crystals that help to absorb the odor of the cat box. They've started putting them in lots of cat litter now, and you can also get a bag of them seperate. They actually work really well.

[Willow]

I tried the crystal litter alone--the cats didn't really use it. So I mixed it in with the clumping litter and it worked really well to keep the odor down. I'm not using it right now because I found it harder to scoop the mixture because I have a scoop that has really narrow slots--for sand-like litter only--I need to get a scoop with wider slots before I try it again. But I was really happy with the results when I did use it.

[Guest]

Have you guys tried Yesterday's News? It's made out of recycled newspapers and does NOT smell at all. My little sister uses it in her hamster cage. She gets it at wal-mart for $7 CAD.

[Willow]

I use Yesterday's News for my ferrets, but sometime the cats will use it. It works OK for the ferrets and other small animals, but every time a cat uses it, after about an hour, the ammonia smell is overwhelming. I've had to change out so many perfectly clean ferret boxes because the cat smell makes me crazy. I've heard the same from people who have used Yesterday's News for post de-claw (grrrrr.... ) victims. You'd have to change it completely every day if you used it for cats, and it's pretty expensive.

[Christa]

We just switched from Feline Pine to Tidy Cat with Crystals and it's going well. The problem with the Feline Pine was that the cats did not like to scratch it much, they would poop and then walk out and OMG it would hit us like a nightmare reek from heck. They do seem to like the Tidy Cat with Crystals and I we like it too. FWIW, when we got our two new kittens we were told to not use clumping litter until the kittens were at least six months old, due to ingestion problems. It's the first I'd heard of it but I figure it won't hurt to do what the vet says. The problem we have with the clumping litter is that we used to not clean the litter box as often as we should and would end up with a concrete urine brick in the bottom of the pan. Now that we have the kittens my hubby is more into their care and he is actually scooping the solids and stirring up the litter. You're supposed to stir litter with crystals to disperse it. BTW I need to introduce my twin kittens, Sidney and Rodney to LHC. They are both black and are about 4 months old. We got them through PetsMart's adoption and they are wonderful. Rodney was a runt but is doing very well. It is interesting, Sidney has very smooth fur but Rodney doesn't. So we call them Smooth Sid and Rough Rod. They are SO CUTE! I will upload pictures soon!hc!Christa